CIO.inc's Cloud and AI Innovation Summit
(Virtual)

By embracing the power of the cloud, organizations can accelerate business growth, enhance agility, and stay ahead in an increasingly digital landscape. Effective cloud leaders understand the potential of cloud technology, drive strategic initiatives, and empower their organizations to tap into the transformative capabilities offered by the cloud.

The session will explore the concept of cloud leadership and highlights the key factors that enable organizations to leverage cloud computing for competitive advantage.

But how realistic is the concept of an AI-first organization where AI is at the core of strategy, operations, and culture? The session will look into the practical challenges in effectively integrating AI into the core of their business operations and culture, ensuring it drives measurable value and innovation, and how to address those challenges.

Key Discussion Points:

• Is ‘AI-first’ organization a realistic and practical approach or simply overhyped;
• Challenges around building an ‘AI-First’ organization;
• Key aspects of building an AI-first organization and integrating AI across all facets of an organization;
• Cultivating an AI-driven culture.

For decades, the traditional IT models have been based on ‘owning IT’ rather than ‘consuming IT’. As a result, most enterprises develop business cases and also negotiate contracts that don’t take into account the differential approach specific to cloud. The result: overspending or rising cost of cloud adoption. This raises questions on deriving value from cloud investments which often fell short of expectations and sometimes also resulting into reverse migration to on-prem. The session will focus on cloud economics and optimizing investments. Also, how to avoid the classic mistakes like undefined cloud roadmap, miscalculated cloud forecasts, undefined business case etc.

In this session we will discuss: –

• Understanding cloud cost factors
• Practical cost-optimization strategies
• Importance of visibility and monitoring
• Importance of cloud governance

By embracing cloud computing, start-ups can leverage its infrastructure, scalability, cost efficiency, innovation, collaboration, and security features that accelerate growth and help in achieving unicorn status. Cloud provides a level-playing field, and empower start-ups to compete and succeed.

This dynamic interaction between AI and cybersecurity underscores how leveraging AI in cybersecurity defense mechanisms is not just a strategic imperative but a necessity in today’s digitally driven environment.

Security practitioners must take a practical approach to integrate AI into cybersecurity frameworks. This will enable organizations to build a proactive defense mechanism along with the rapid response process. Although AI presents numerous opportunities, it poses challenges in fostering innovation and collaboration within the cybersecurity ecosystem. This requires continuous learning, adaptation and strategic leadership informed by AI-driven insights.

The session will cover:

• The evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats in a global context, spanning Southeast Asia;
• Use cases related to deploying AI-focused programs for enterprise security, innovation and defense;
• The intersection of AI, data privacy and ethics in establishing cybersecurity governance.

Various cloud computing models have played a vital role in shaping the use of AI use-cases for the real world. Moreover, edge computing, which extends the cloud capabilities to on premise with low latency will further help in developing more practical use cases. More recently, the large language models (LLMs) have made to the headlines and the fundamental layer to build those is cloud computing. The session should discuss how CIOs are tweaking their cloud computing framework to accelerate the practical application of new AI technologies, including generative AI. In this session we will discuss:

• The growing influence of AI and enterprise response
• Need for augmenting cloud infrastructure for optimal performance
• Challenges in aligning AI and cloud strategies

It also examines the collaborative co-evolution of humans and AI systems, shedding light on the extensive societal impact in Singapore, spanning industries, workforce dynamics, and the broader societal framework. The session elaborates on the profound influence of AI in businesses and the technologies adopted. It delves in the transformative power of AI to revolutionize the way businesses innovate and operate.

The session will cover:

• Exploring approaches to evaluate return on investment in business AI initiatives;
• Navigating complexities in implementing AI-driven optimization solutions;
• Identifying and discussing common challenges faced by businesses in adopting AI technologies.

CIOs will gain valuable insights into aligning their technology and digital strategies with the broader corporate objectives. This collaborative discussion will provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and the formulation of strategies. The goal is to ensure that CIOs are well-prepared to contribute to realizing CEOs’ priorities and driving impactful technological transformations.

The session will cover:

• The need to foster innovation and technology partnership to achieve business goals;
• Harnessing Data-driven decision-making and nurturing talent development;
• The importance of aligning strategic priorities.